The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

tk

This was not one I rated highly. I admired Byatt's command of language and the questions posed about who 'owns' a writer's work and life. But I found the poetry and the letters between the poets rather tedious.

This was one of my favourite Booker winners - it was my first Byatt novel and it greatly exceeded my expectations. I must admit that I only skim-read the poems, but I find Byatt's attention to detail and willingness to indulge in long digressions fascinating. I would be extremely surprised if any of the other shortlisted books match this one.

I've just started re-reading this (this is my third time), and I am once again finding it splendid.

My most vivid memories of the book, and the aspects of it that are most interesting to me again on this read through, have to do with class, particularly as filtered through higher education. I know that most readers are taken up with questions of the victorian style plot, the literary mystery, the romance(s), and whether or not to read the poems (you should), but I think for me Byatt's sharp eye for what the academy is actually like is perhaps my favorite thing.

Indeed, my most vivid memory is of the moment, early on, where Roland stays overnight in Maud's apartment, and there is a paragraph describing the clean, well-equipped, and economically comfortable way in which she lives, all crystallized in the image of the spare bedding -- a ready, spotlessly clean, white comforter, cozy and welcoming and something that Roland could never, ever offer to an overnight guest, even were he to have one.

Later you see how their combined class status operates when meeting the couple who have the letters in their house--the literary mystery depends as much on a deft handling of this situation with all of its fraught economic and social status variables, as it does on Maud remembering that poem about the dollies.